


Fear and Knowledge

by quigonejinn



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Slavery, F/M, M/M, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-11-14
Packaged: 2017-12-30 07:40:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Pacific Rim slave AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What are you afraid of?

**Author's Note:**

> This is fic about the Pacific Rim universe with slavery. It is not a nice fic. It is really mean, and it also doesn't come close, like, not even fucking close, to talking about the enormously complicated and ugly results of what happens when society says people are property that can be owned.
> 
> So basically, you're warned for this being full of sad things, like rape, suicide, shitty treatment of mental health, and child abuse. 
> 
> And you know, this also not being nearly fucking sad enough.

In this universe, every few years, _National Geographic_ has an article on one of the handful of extant societies without one form or another of slavery. Some of the more liberal American universities have endowed chairs for slave studies, and in the North Sea, a pirate radio broadcaster sets up, on an old World War II defense platform, a country where he claims slavery will never be allowed. Freeland, he calls it, but when nobody takes him up on the offer, he has to start selling fake nobility titles to keep it from falling into the water. 

Generally, in this universe, society without slavery strikes people as strange. Unfair. As a ladder has steps, so humans are divided into levels. Slavery based solely on race or ethnicity or as a consequence of war is a violation of the laws of almost every civilized nation, and the Geneva Slave Convention to boot. Nevertheless, modern international trade and governance recognize two types of human servitude. 

First, those who who have signed away freedom for economic benefit. Colloquially known as blues. 

Second, those who have forfeited their right to freedom by crimes against society. Colloquially known as reds. 

...

When Stacker Pentecost is twelve, he stabs the man who killed his father. He lights a building on fire, and in front of a judge, his sister and mother plead for a lesser sentence. He is young, they say. He loved his father. The judge is moved, and Stacker is very young: she puts him under the collar, but keeps him out of the post-Thatcher auction docks. Instead, he goes to the military reform academy. 

...

When Herc Hansen is thirty-four, Scissure comes to Sydney, and he defies the no-fly order. Together with his brother, he takes a military chopper out to his son's school on the North Shore. They load it with Chuck and as many other eleven year olds on they can fit. In the aftermath, the government acknowledges their courage, agrees that they saved a half-dozen lives, but says that an example must to be set. Mercy is that not everyone in that helicopter gets a red collar: the children Herc and Scott saved go back to their families. 

Only Herc and Scott. And Chuck. 

Chuck is eleven; the Hansens were, before this, free. The memory of Chuck, sobbing while the collar was locked and stamped, will never, ever leave Herc's mind: hearing that, he thinks, hurt almost more than getting the brand. 

Listening to Chuck scream while they dragged him away hurt for longer. 

...

" -- ten kills for Striker. That's a record." 

...

Ask Herc about it, and at this point in his life, he has learned to mumble a few words about being grateful -- Scott, back in the day, was the one who stepped in with something smooth how he and his brother were, of course, grateful for a second chance. Glad for the opportunity to do something for humanity. 

For his part, Herc barely remembers the months when he was contracted to a company in Tasmania to fly gas pipeline workers out for maintenance or in the mountains, doing wilderness air evac rescue: it's a muddle of sleeping in the company dormitory. Brown-red mountains, cold air, the way the still-healing brand on his right shoulder blade itched and itched, the way the collar chafed over his collarbones and his hands wandered up to it everytime he wasn't paying attention. He doesn't remember any of the people who were in the dorm with him. Vaguely, he remembers the time they put him in solitary because he refused to get out of bed. He heard the alarm, he heard the supervisor telling him to get up, he heard them give him the warnings required in the contract, but they still had to pick him up and half-drag, half-carry him to the box. 

He spent three days and nights in there, starting at the slit in the box, ignoring the food they pushed in, but drinking a little of the water. He spent most of the time thinking about how he could have ruined his son and his brother's lives like this. How Angie was better off dead. What would have happened to her if he'd gotten her out? What was happening to Chuck now? When he came out, the medic on staff took one look at him, asked him how the fuck he'd managed to hurt himself this badly in a steel box where all the furniture was bolted to the floor. Because his contract called for reasonable medical accommodation, they started dosing him each morning with antidepressants, putting them in Herc's mouth, checking his mouth afterwards with a flashlight to make sure that he wasn't trying to get out of swallowing them. 

Five months in -- 

...

Five months in, Herc realizes, it saved his life when an algorithm analyzing biometric red collar intake data figured that he and Scott might be Drift compatible. What the hell did Herc know about the Drift at that point? There was a radio and a TV in the company dorms, even a computer with Internet access because pilots on a red-collar contract were expensive and high-demand and worked better when happy, but he had been turning his face to the wall whenever something came on about kaiju. 

They fly him back to Sydney for in-person testing. It turns out that being Drift compatible is important for something that the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps is doing. 

"Scores like that, RAAF background, the two of you are going to Alaska," the scientist says.

"Alaska?" Herc hears himself saying, and he feels himself looking over at Scott, who is thinner, more tired-looking than Herc remembers. Odd, too, Herc knows, that he is upset about being even further away from Chuck:. Whole oceans, different continents. A series of court cases two decades before established that even red collars had rights under Australian law, and when Chuck was sixteen, with the appropriate permissions on both sides, Herc could call him every other weekend. Undeniably, though, one of the forfeited rights was the right to parent children. It was a risk Herc took when he got into the helicopter; it was a risk he took when he headed out with air control screaming in his ears. 

But it turns out Chuck is going to Alaska, too. 

It's hard to tell with twelve year-old brains, but he is, the scientist says, potentially Drift-compatible with both his uncle and his father. 

...

Twelve? Chuck had been eleven when Scissure came, and he turned twelve, Herc realizes, without his father or his uncle or a single family member. Herc finds out that Chuck has been in a reform school for red collars -- the thought makes Herc angry, punches through the cloud that he's told is the resut of coming off the meds his last assignment had him on. As if Chuck had done something wrong besides get on a helicopter when his dad pulled him on. As if Chuck was wrong in not wanting to die. 

The kid that he sees on the tarmac is taller than Herc remembers. Quieter. He hangs back when Herc tries, awkwardly, to hug him. 

Herc doesn't know what to say, doesn't know what to do, doesn't know how to ask. 

...

"Brands or -- "

"Tattoos, but they'll brand you on the face if you try to run away," she says, wrinkling her nose, and Scott smiles at her. There is a scar on his cheek that Herc doesn't remember from before

"We're Drift-compatible," Scott says. He actually sounds like his old self. "Me and my brother. Gonna pilot Jaegers." 

"Lucky you," she says and rolls her eyes. "That kid with you? I need to scan him, too." 

Scott grabs Chuck by the arm and pulls him over, so that she can scan and log him: before moving onto the next group, she tells Scott her ident number, so that he can look her up when he's off shift, and Herc does what he has done since they lost their right to liberty: finds a place where he can be out of the way, but useful. Keeps quiet. Does his work and finds it strange, generally, to be back in the classroom at his age. 

A month into them being at the Academy, though, Chuck gets in trouble. He is down in town, done with his classes for the day, signed out with the guard and everything. He has cash in hand because as a student at the Jaeger Academy, just like Herc and Scott, he gets a stipend, even though he's restricted to the first unit until they figure out how to get Drift simulator equipment that won't fry him as a twelve year old. 

So Chuck wants to spend, but they question him. They're not used to seeing students as young as him, and Chuck can't prove that the swipe card in his hand isn't loaded with stolen -- 

He makes a fuss, and when they still won't let him buy anything, he knocks a display stand over. Herc's face is white when Chuck comes back, face screwed up. The ticket is already on the screen in their quarters, and the Academy does corporal punishment for order infractions -- get an answer wrong in class, and you won't get strapped, but overturn a desk or backtalk an instructor, and you end up tied to rings in the on one of the weekly punishment assembly. This isn't civilian life. This isn't free life. Herc yells at Chuck; Chuck says that he isn't afraid of the rings, but Herc hooks his fingers under Chuck's collar and drags him back into town. 

The store owner turns out to be in his late-forties, fatherly looking, but tough. Free. 

_New to the collar,_ Herc says. _He lost his Mum when Scissure came through, and he isn't used to --_

At this point, the man's eyes soften and go from Herc to Chuck, staring off in the distance, mouth screwed up at the mention of his mother. 

Later, Herc finds out the man's wife is four months in the ground. Not kaiju-related. Just a car accident, and the man says he'll withdraw the ticket and say it was a misunderstanding, if Herc and his kid come in tomorrow night and help unload pallets and do a good job of it. Can they get a pass from the Corps to come down after hours? 

Herc begs the instructor who has been the friendliest to him, and she gives him a pass down to town and to stay out after curfew: it's heavy work, hard work, but Herc is grateful, and when Chuck gets too tired to do anything, Herc works harder to make up for it. He is there until midnight, doing the work of three men. Every muscle in his body is screaming and he has to get up in six hours for cardio drills. Chuck curls up in a corner and falls asleep before the end, but David, as the man tells Herc to call him around hour two, keeps his word. He sits down on a crate, and in front of Herc, handing the tablet over to Herc when he's done, showing him how the ticket off the system. 

There are good free people. There are bad free people. There are good collared people. There are bad collared people. Herc does his damned best to teach Chuck this. It's possible to be a red collar and a decent human being. 

...

"Hey, kid," Herc says, shaking his son awake. "Time to go home." 

Half-asleep, Chuck looks younger. More like Herc remembers from before Scissure. He stumbles up to his feet and is too tired to push Herc away when Herc takes his hand. Half a block down, Herc bends down, picks Chuck up, and carries him the rest of the way to the bus stop, so they can catch the last shuttle back to the Academy; Chuck is heavy, but not that much heavier than some of the pallets that Herc has been moving, and when he picks his son up, this strange, wild feeling goes through Herc's arms and legs. It makes him feel strong. 

The night is cold and clear. It's spring in Kodiak, Alaska, and the stars wink in and out of the moving cloud cover ahead. It's only four blocks to the shuttle stop, but Herc remembers the strength he felt, carrying his son. 

He could do something for his Chuck. He could help him. He could -- 

...

Three months into the Academy, when Scott and Herc gone through the first and second cuts and are cruising through Conn-POD operations thanks to their piloting experience, Chuck gets into bad trouble. 

Not just unloading pallets work for a couple hours trouble. Not get dragged to the library and forced to help the librarian five hours a week for a month and Herc giving up his precious free Sundays for the same amount of time to get her 2005 Honda running sweet again, because Chuck is a little shit who won't shut up when it turns out the library doesn't have what he wants. Instead, the instructors in his code engineering class has been riding Chuck, apparently, and when the instructor sends Chuck out into the hallway to stand in shame until the end of the class, like Chuck is the kid that he actually is -- an administrator stops and asks Chuck what he's doing out of class. Chuck doesn't feel like explaining, so he tells the man to fuck himself. The man asks him to repeat himself. Chuck says, even more clearly, _go fuck yourself_. 

When Herc goes to the administrator and tries to explain, tries to make it better. What can he and Chuck do to fix this? Herc is good with his hands. Chuck is a good kid. Herc can fix up a car, do a lot of work around the house. 

The administrator says he lives in Academy housing. There is nothing Herc can fix up. No little chores that Chuck can do to show how sorry he is. 

"Maybe, though -- " the man says, and with the desk between them, with a window behind him, showing the Alaska spring turning into summer, he looks appraisingly. 

Having only been collared for about a eight months, it takes Herc a while to put together the look, the smile, the slight lean forward, what the man is suggesting without actually having to say it. 

In the moment, Herc can only manage to repeat himself. Is there anything he can fix up? Any work he can do? He used to be a pilot. 

There isn't, the man says. 

...

There aren’t a lot of kids at the Academy, and punishment assembly is on Saturday morning before letting the students out, so that they have something on their minds. Because Chuck is so short, they have move the rings down and closer together — he isn’t the only one up today. A Chinese woman for insubordination, a pair of Americans from Iowa for drunkenness. Full-grown adults, and Chuck goes up when it’s his time. There is a noise that ripples over the crowd when they realize just how small he is, but Chuck lets them lock him into the cuffs, then put the cuffs on the rings.

They bring out the strap, wide, leather, heavy enough to break skin on a grown adult. The administrator on duty today isn’t the one that Chuck cursed at; Herc knows this one. A good man, by and large, and he looks a little sick to be doing this to a twelve-year old kid. 

Chuck takes two without making a noise; three opens up a cut on his back and he gasps, loud enough that it echoes in the room. At five he starts to scream, and he has another seven left. Herc closes his eyes, trying to shut out the sounds of Chuck sobbing, then the crack, and the way, after the crack, the sobbing turns into screaming, louder and louder until Chuck either can’t scream any louder or the pain starts to fade. Eventually, the administrator decides that it’s better to get the strokes in, all together, over with now, so he starts laying them in one after the other, and Chuck’s screaming turns into a single wail. 

Next time, Herc swears, eyes closed, hands clenching, he’ll get down on his knees. 

Next time, he'll _offer_. 

...

Raleigh Becket goes to the Wall for five years for refusing to pilot a Jaeger after his brother dies. When Stacker Pentecost looks in the records, trying to compile the list of surviving Jaeger pilots now that the Academy has been shut down, he is surprised to find Becket still alive.


	2. I know what you are.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _When Stacker Pentecost is twenty-eight, he wins his freedom by piloting Onibaba in solo combat._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This continues to be, like, a seriously un-nice fic. If you don't like seeing hideous, awful, unfair things happen to people who deserve better, this is not a fic for you.

When Stacker Pentecost is twenty-eight, he wins his freedom by piloting Onibaba in solo combat. Tamsin has a seizure; LOCCENT cuts her out of the Drift, and for three hours, Stacker burns and screams and burns and fights. He does not stop: he doesn't lay down and die, which other pilots in his situation might have done, no matter how carefully trained on simulators and vetted with psych profiles. He doesn't try to take his freedom, either. In Cabo, Mammoth Apostle made an attempt; LOCCENT had to activate a failsafe in the motion harnesses. When the surviving pilot tried to activate the self-destruct, they had to call in double strike for kaiju and Jaeger. The failure almost killed the program. 

Instead, in Tokyo, Stacker stays and does his duty: in fact, he does more than his duty. More than he was trained for, more than could be expected from a slave. The scars on his arms and chest and sides are from the Driftsuit, and as a reward, the Corps gives him his freedom, then awards him a medal and a commission -- in that order, so that the medal and the commission will stick. 

For Tokyo, Stacker becomes an international hero, and when the grateful nation of Japan asks what they can do for him, he bows and says that duty is its own reward. On his way out of the room, though, he pauses and asks his translator. When he was standing on Coyote's shoulders, waiting for evac, he saw a girl standing in the rubble, looking up at him. He was a way off, but he didn't think he saw a collar. Is she all right? Back with her parents? The translator says she will find out. A few days later, the message comes back. Her parents are dead. Mako Mori is a ward of the state, as her remaining family declined to take responsibility for her. She'll be cared for app -- 

Stacker stands up from the console, walks the length of the room, then comes back and sits down in the chair, but doesn't type up a message immediately. Losing his freedom at twelve made him exercise more caution: instead, he picks up the phone and calls down to his handler at media relations. He runs it by command, and is told that no, it would not cause embarrassment or difficulty. 

So he asks Japan to give him the bond for Mako. 

...

Stacker Pentecost becomes a property owner, and he talks it over with Herc the next time they're on the same Shatterdome. Mako is still clearing customs; legal is working through some small wrinkle, and Stacker asks whether he is doing a moral thing. A good thing. 

"You going to treat her right?"

Stacker makes a face. "Yes."

"That's what matters," Herc says, and uses the bottle opener on another beer. 

Stacker looks away, angry on a level he knows is dangerous to articulate, even twenty-five stories up in Lucky Seven's maintenance bay, with his best friend. 

...

They met at the tail end of of Herc's time at the Academy. Stacker and Tamsin were in Coyote Tango and came back for a week as part of a group of veterans, talking field wisdom into the thick skulls of the fourteen potential members of the second class of pilots: a subunit on life in the Conn, like in the Shatterdome, navigating life as a Ranger and collared. The dialogue is frank, blunt, and when they break for lunch on the second day, they go out into the hallway, where some poor blue-collar on a bad corporate contract is getting written up by some bastard civilian flash suit, not even a Corps officer. From the yelling, the girl had been sweeping up in the hallway, apparently and had pushed a little dust onto the woman's heels. Now, the girl is backed up against the wall, gripping the broom in both hands, face white with fear. 

"Look me in the eye again," the woman says, "and I'll see you get another ten." 

Stacker looks away in anger. 

Herc looks away because he still doesn't like seeing something helpless get hurt. 

...

Late one night during that week, with the deep black Alaska sky overhead and coals glowing in an outdoor fire pit, Stacker tells Herc about seeing the northern lights when he was at the Academy, how him and Tamsin climbed out of their dorm window because they were graduating to Coyote Tango in a week, but it had been cloudy, and Tamsin was going to be fucked and twice-fucked if she spent a whole winter in Alaska while locked inside a building and never getting to see, for one reason or another, the aurora fucking borealis. What was admin going to do, ring 'em up and have them bleeding through dress blues at the press conference? 

"So we boosted the window off our room, climbed up onto the roof, and fucking froze 'em off for four hours," Stacker says, and Herc grins. 

"Did you see them?" 

"Yeah."

"Was it worth it?"

"Yeah," Stacker says and smiles, broadly. Herc sees how it changes Stacker's whole face, and he watches Stacker lean back in the chair -- the firepit is a real one, with a stone bottom and chairs drawn up around the fire pit. It's past summer, moving into fall, and the other pilots and almost-pilots have gone back inside, with Scott flirting with the all-woman pair piloting the Indonesian Jaeger in a mix of English and hand gestures and _Bahasa Indonesia_ that he picked up somehow, somewhere. The only two people left out on the patio are Stacker and Herc. 

Good dinner inside them. Beer. Fire burning down. The smell of smoke. Chuck, Herc knows, is supposed to be in bed. Since he has a 5:30 fitness eval tomorrow, Herc is pretty sure his son is actually in bed, sleeping. Eventually, Herc asks Stacker what it's like to be in the Conn-POD hooked up to a real Jaeger. 

He's been in the simulators with the Conn, but morning conversation was that simulators did shit. Didn't come close to what being in a Jaeger was like, what the future pilots could look forward. _Simulators like shadows on the moon_ , one of the Indonesian pilots said, but Herc wasn't sure he understood. So he asks Stacker. 

"Like nothing else on earth," Stacker says. "You feel like you can fight anything on Earth and win." 

Then he goes silent, and at this point in their lives, he doesn't know Stacker well enough to know what Stacker is thinking about: later, he learns. On this night, though, to steer conversation in a safer course, Stacker looks out at the view in front of them. The Academy is built on a high hill; this patio faces south, from the island, so it's big and dark. 

"Nothing out there until Hawaii," Stacker says. "You ever been to Hawaii?" 

"Honeymoon," Herc says. "Long time ago." 

Stacker looks over, and his face is gentler than Herc would have expected.  
...

What is the verdict on Stacker Pentecost and Herc Hansen? Good men. Even before he was a free, Stacker rode everyone hard, but he holds himself to the same standard. Herc Hansen is a good man. Absolutely reliable. Nice man, and why shouldn’t he put his mouth around something occasionally because he wants to, not because his shit of a son has gotten into trouble again or some free wants to come on a Ranger’s face? 

And, the wags add, look at how Stacker comes back to him, time and time again. Never another collared, never another free, not even a rumor about Jaeger flies. Of course Herc is good at what he does. He gets enough practice, doesn't he? 

...

There are decent free people. There are terrible free people. There are decent collared people. There are terrible collared people. 

Herc does his damned best to teach Chuck that it's possible to be a red collar and a decent human being. 

...

A joke: _Are you looking for Herc Hansen? Have you checked under the desk?_

...

When Herc wakes in the infirmary, he finds that he can't move his right wrist. 

When he follows his right arm, elbow, wrist, he finds that it's in traction, strapped to the frame so that he won't try to turn onto his back. His right foot is tied up in the same way. His tongue is stuck to the top of his mouth, and the world is a haze. 

"Water?" a voice says softly, and Herc's eyes aren't working yet. There is too much light. Somebody puts a straw against his lower lip, and he leans forward a little and sucks down a mouthful of room temperature water. He wants more, but the straw goes away, and Herc understands: too much will make him sick. He wants cold water, because his skin feels warm and curiously dry, but that'll make him sick, too. 

"Miss Mori," he says, when his eyes finally work. 

"Mr. Hansen," she says, settling back into the chair with the cup of water and straw in her lap. " _Sensei_ is at a meeting, but he'll be back." 

Mako is in a gray blouse and neat navy trousers. She sits and watches him, and Herc breathes out, dimly aware of the pain. He suspects that he isn't supposed to be on morphine, and that there will be hell to pay if a free besides Stacker finds out, but he isn't going to complain. He tries to keep his eyes open as long as he can, but the combination of morphine and light-headedness is too much. He closes his eyes and sinks back into memories: Sydney, Hawaii, metropolitan Jakarta spread out underneath him the time that they went up to the Signature Tower for a Corps event, every last one of them, including Chuck, who had to be crammed into a suit and have his hair slicked down and complained on the whole ride over and even the elevator up, but shut his mouth with a click when they got to the observation tower and saw the lights and the Port and a tanker steering its way carefully around the bones of JK-3 left in the bay. 

Going after Scott with both hands. 

Mako nudges Herc awake again to have a little more water from the straw. She stays with him until Pentecost comes back. 

...

What does Herc Hansen see in the Drift? His brother on top of a red-collar girl who doesn't want him. She isn't fighting him, but has her eyes closed and mouth open. Easy enough to read as consensual without being enthusiastic, except that as they're closing the last kilometer to the kaiju, adrenaline flowing, excitement, the one goddamn part about being a red collar that Herc Hansen loves, the Drift memory cuts back in at the moment Scott tries to kiss her. He is already inside; he is excited, and the connection to what they're doing. What else has felt as good recently? The kiss is extra, and the girl is makes a small noise in her throat, because she is terrified and she didn't -- 

Herc Hansen has spent a lot of time on his knees, _offering_. 

Alternatively, lying on his back with his eyes closed and mouth open. 

He doesn't remember tearing out of his motion harness. 

...

LB-15 is on the horizon and swinging its heavy, ox-like head between Nova and Tacit. A third Jaeger would be idea in dealing with a kaiju of this size and configuration, but Herc is out of his harness. He and Scott are rolling around the floor of the Conn-POD, and Scott is trying to fight Herc off, but Herc means to kill his brother if he can. 

For abandoning his post, Herc's sentence is a fifteen hundred with the cat o' nine tails: execution by slow removal of first the skin, then muscle, then blood and nerve. It's meant to be public death by public agony, but Stacker uses every inch of personal pull and influence and favor to get it down to five hundred in the present. He'll take personal responsibility for Herc Hansen. The man is a valuable resource. He has piloted every generation of Jaeger to date. Knowledge will die with him, and Stacker makes good points to the people that matter, so they suspend part of the sentence: five hundred laid on at a special assembly, with the balance suspended. If Herc puts a toe out of line, today, tomorrow, twenty years from now -- he'll get the balance. 

...

Even with five hundred, it's a long road to recovery. 

Herc isn't out of the infirmary yet when Lucky Seven leaves Long Beach with Scott Hansen and a sixteen year old Chuck Hansen as her pilots. 

...

"Still want to pilot a Jaeger?"

"Yes," Mako says, neutrally, and brings the straw to his mouth again. Herc notices the blue markings on the collar around her throat in the same places where his collar is colored red: at this point, he doesn't know her particularly well, has only met her a handful of times and heard about her from Stacker, but he remembers that conversation with Stacker, where he asked if taking on her bond was the moral thing to do. Herc remembers asking Stacker if he was going to treat her well, and Herc does know that Stacker has spent years trying to keep her out of the Jaeger Academy as long as he can. When she finally goes at the age of fourteen, Herc is on the tarmac. She bows to him. He awkwardly manages something in her direction, then catches her in a hug that seems to surprise her. She doesn't mind, though; after a moment of surprise, she turns her face into his shoulder for a moment, and hugs him. 

Then, steps back. She bows to Stacker; he inclines towards her, looks as though he wants to say something, but doesn't. 

They watch the chopper lift in the sky, and Stacker watches it shrink. 

"She's a real bright girl, Stacker," Herc says, softly. "Tough, too."

Stacker is, Herc knows, hoping she'll -- 

...

Mako struggles at first, but Herc's assessment is spot-on: exceptionally tough and exceptionally, exceptionally bright. She makes it through, successively, the first cut, the second cut, the third cut, the last. Flying colors, a record and scores of distinction particularly given her age and rough start, and on her graduation from the Academy, Herc and Stacker come to Kodiak Island. Herc stands on Stacker's left in the bright June sunshine with the mountains in the background, the smell of sea and pine trees in the area, and he watches Stacker, face stiff, say that he is sorry. He set the paperwork in motion before leaving Anchorage. He is giving Mako her freedom. 

Herc watches Mako's face crumble. 

She manages to bow to Stacker and Herc in turn, then asks for permission to be dismissed: Stacker gives it to her, and a few minutes later, when Stacker tells him that he can go, too, Herc finds her at the edge of where the trees grow, head against the rough bark, arms wrapped around herself, trying to hold the sobs in. He pulls her away from the wall, brushes the needles out of her hair. He pries off the fingers that she has wrapped around her collar, and he lets Mako cry herself out against him. He reminds her how much Stacker loves her, that he is doing this to -- 

Mako cries harder.

Only slaves pilot Jaegers.


	3. Keep it in your sights now.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Here is what happens after his brother dies._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of really, really bad things happen in this. If you have triggers related to sexual assault or child abuse, please consider whether this is the fic for you.

"Miss Mori," Herc says, knocking on the open door. "Chopper in ten." 

Mako considers him, then looks back at the faces around the table. She nods: to a man and woman, they rise, and she slides her chair back and goes out of the room. 

...

On all sides, ground crews are moving quickly, getting supplies and passengers out of the rain, bringing cargo into the rain, trying to direct traffic without getting soaked. Herc walks out with Mako, holding the umbrella over them both -- it's big enough for that. They watch the chopper come out of the clouds and land; until they slow, the blades whip puddles knee-high. Stacker doesn't have to get under the umbrella, and he makes the appropriate introductions. 

_This is Raleigh Becket_ , he says. _Miss Mori, one of our brightest. Also in charge of the Mark III restoration program._

With rain running down the sides of the umbrella, Mako tells Stacker in Japanese that she imagined him differently. Raleigh notices the blue coloring around her throat is from matching streaks in her hair, so he doesn't say anything. He glances up once, quickly, to see her face when the words are coming out, but moves his eyes down to the clipboard she is holding loosely at her side. 

Mako sees the shift on his face, though. Stacker sees it, too. 

For his part, Herc holds the umbrella over Mako and Stacker and smiles. He seems not to pay attention to the rain running down down his back and shoulders and arms. 

...

Here is what happens after his brother dies: Raleigh refuses to pilot again. Stacker delays command first by telling them they have the Gage twins on station and Becket isn't medically cleared. Then, when the tests start to come back clean, he asks for them to give Becket more time. _He killed the kaiju and brought that Jaeger back for you, two thousand tons, thirty-five miles alone in the snow and sea._ Stacker leaves out the part about them stepping off Miracle Mile; Stacker also doesn't tell them he got his freedom and officer's step for doing just about the same thing that Becket did. Less, because all he had to do was kill Onibaba. Reminding them would only make things worse: command is itchy these days. Starting to feel that it's losing control of the situation. 

So Stacker gets Raleigh a week and a half of breathing room. Then, command sends orders for Raleigh to get back into a Driftsuit for a simulator; they don't usually get involved in personnel decisions like this, but somebody has his or her back up. Stacker goes down to the infirmary personally, and they talk, fifteen minutes, half an hour, an hour about piloting alone. Stacker remembers, vividly, the overly bright lights of the infirmary, the cordoned off area. Raleigh sat on his cot; Stacker sat on the next cot over and studied the slumped shoulders, the shiny new scars, and the loss of muscle tone. 

"I can't have anyone else in my head again," Becket says, and he looks up to Stacker for the first time. The look on his face makes Stacker breathe out, carefully. 

"Are you afraid of dying?" 

Raleigh considers this -- really thinks about it. Stacker considers how whether the very, very young man he knew from before would have considered it so seriously. 

"I don't know," Raleigh says, finally. "I know I don't want to pilot again." 

"They'll try," Stacker says. "I'll do what I can, but I can't promise anything." 

Raleigh curls his shoulders up, wincing when the motion stretches his new scar tissue, but he repeats himself. He can't have anybody in his head again. He can't. 

So what can Stacker do after that? Only what he can. 

Four days later, Herc comes running, pulling him out of a logistics meeting. Control team out of Hong Kong, he says. Landed with the most recent shuttle, went straight for Becket, and they dragged him out of the infirmary. It's not just a beating. By the time Stacker gets down there, Raleigh is tied down by the wrists in a punishment room, screaming. Stacker comes into the adjoining viewing room at a run, scans the throat of the man sent to oversee the work, and sees a red collar. Stacker feels a flash of self-disgust for checking, but Raleigh screams again, and there is no time for moral niceties. Stacker moves fast. The man steps forward to introduce himself; Stacker grips him by the wrist and slams him, face-first, down onto the table. He twists the man's arm hard enough to make him scream; Herc hits the intercom button to the punishment chamber, so that they'll hear the order to stop. 

...

To be effective, Stacker has to frame his anger. He has to tell command that he is furious at the violation of his command: Anchorage is his Shatterdome. His Shatterdome, his rules. Stacker reminds them of his record. Pilots under him fight harder, win more, last longer. They come back with their Jaegers more than for any other Marshal in the service. 

The next words he has to say stick in his throat, but Stacker gets them out anyway: they'll get through to people who have never worn a collar or loved anyone who wore one in the Corps. 

_They ruined Becket_ , he says. 

...

How does the Corps punish active Jaeger pilots? There are the first-line restrictions of losing canteen or leave privileges. Docking of pay. Confinement to quarters. 

After that, strap and the whip and the cat are options, but they injure. Active pilots need to be able to deploy with little notice: drift compatibility is rare. Furthermore, they can leave scars that interfere with the function of the Drivesuits. A well-trained, experienced Jaeger pilot is rarer. Not everyone can be Stacker Pentecost, running his Shatterdome with the force of his natural authority, so Hong Kong traditionally uses close confinement and oxygen restriction. Sydney favors electricity. Passed through the body in controlled doses, the effects were short-lived. 

Alternatively: rape. Even the threat, Stacker has heard people say within earshot of him -- rape can be useful, particularly for those who have had been punished with it before. 

...

Here is what happens after Herc Hansen loses his place in Lucky Seven: he is Stacker Pentecost's right-hand man, running messages, following three steps behind. Were there jokes before? There are more after. It costs Stacker Pentecost to keep his best friend alive. 

...

Here is what a rough start at the Academy means: a hundred strokes in her first week. Mako isn't stupid. Mako knows that she has had it easy as _sensei's_ personal property, and she keeps her eyes down, tries not to argue points, tries to make herself small. But there is a limit, and there is also the fact that Stacker Pentecost has a name. Mako stands out. 

On Saturday afternoon, when they call her name, she stands up. She pulls off her tank top. Her bunkmate at the Academy has been a red collar for a full decade and gives Mako good advice: you're going in to be tied down and have a strap put across your back. If you're getting a hundred, don't worry about a blouse. Don't worry about a bra. If it's your first time, your hands will be shaking too hard to get the buttons and the catches off. If they have to, they'll strip your top off in front of the assembly, so wear your tank. Let them tie you up. Don't fight them. 

Say your name when they want you to, and scream when you have to. As much anything that'll happen up there, it'll help. 

Mako takes a hundred strokes, and she does everything required to stay clean for the test of her time there: she comes to understand why Stacker didn't want her there at twelve, thirteen. 

It cost Stacker Pentecost to free her after going all the way through the Academy and qualifying to pilot. 

...

In the Kwoon, Raleigh asks Stacker if he is afraid to let his brightest spar against a red collar. In the hallway after, Raleigh tells It doesn't matter that she doesn't have a collar, or that he's a red. They are Drift compatible. Raleigh can see Mako getting ready to politely turn him down, so he steps close and says that she isn't Stacker's blue anymore. 

She doesn't have to obey him. 

Mako's face goes hard, and Raleigh can hear the core of real anger in her voice. 

"It isn't obedience, Mr. Becket," she says. "It's respect." 

...

It takes -- 

...

It cost Stacker something to free Mako. It cost her something to get through the Academy. Six months later, Stacker gets a page on his personal channel. It wakes him in bed, and when he sees who it's from -- Stacker dresses quickly, pulling on a shirt and trousers, grabbing a jacket from his closet. He walks quickly when someone might see him. It's two in the morning, though, and finally, at the final bend from Herc's quarters, with no-one around, he breaks into a run. The door is ajar, but the lights off. Mako is already there, and in the light from the hall, he sees her look up when he comes in. She says that the lights are off because more light hurts Mr. Hansen's eyes. She thinks he has a concussion. 

Herc's voice is a little muffled when he says that Mako is free now and shouldn't be calling him _mister_ : he is lying on his stomach, Stacker realizes, through a blur of anger. 

There were three of them, Mako says. There are tears in her eyes and iron in her voice, and she is sitting on the bed next to Herc: Stacker sits down, carefully, on the bed next to them. 

It's not so bad, Herc says. 

Mako says that she heard Mr. Hansen trying to -- they were doing it right there in the hall, and Stacker gently, carefully touches her on the shoulder. Mako takes it as the invitation as it's meant to be, and she burrows against him and starts to cry. It's the first time they've touched each other since the day she graduated, and in the strip of light from the door, Stacker can see that she is holding Herc's hand. Carefully, cautiously, not wanting to startle anyone, Stacker shifts on the bed. He puts one arm around Mako and feels how hard she is trying to keep her crying quiet. From the way she shakes -- 

How bad was it at the Academy for her? Stacker hugs her a little more tightly, masters his anger again. 

He turns to Herc. "We need to get you to the infirmary." 

Herc turns his face out of the pillow; his voice sounds tired. "Mako shoved the second one off." Herc pauses. "Besides, you sure that you want this on the record, Stacks? You know it's about Nova trying to get transferred to your command." 

...

Over the years, Stacker has worked with almost every Jaeger: Nova, Tacit, the reincarnation of Coyote Tango. Jaeger pilots generally want to work with him. Possibly soft on collareds, but he knows his business; his LOCCENT knows theirs. Herc Hansen piloted four generations of Jaegers; Stacker Pentecost has run four generations of Jaeger. 

Four? Stacker has never run Striker Eureka: the honor, he says, calmly, has not been his. When there are only three functioning Jaegers left in the world, when there is only one Shatterdome left and he is the Marshal of it, he has no choice. 

After the Kwoon, Stacker tells Mako that a long time ago he made her a promise. 

Mako falls into a memory of Onibaba. 

...

" -- don't bloody care. He's a has-been, and she's a rookie. Hang him up, and make her watch. Make her do it, in fact -- " 

Raleigh stops, mid-pace. He glances over at Mako: she has her hands tucked behind her back; her eyes face forward. Her face is white. There are two red spots on her cheeks. 

When Chuck Hansen comes stalking out, he takes looks at Mako, standing there without a collar around her neck. Chuck gets one word out in Mako's direction about her being a disgrace, and Raleigh is on Chuck Hansen before -- 

...

A memory that Raleigh sees in compressed form inside Mako's head: she is fourteen and underneath the instructor who gave her fifty of the hundred she took the opening week. Thirty-five were for arguing with him, and fifteen were for standing there, eyes blazing, after he gave her the first thirty-five. It's spring in Anchorage; Mako is weeks past the actual beating, and she is on her back. They're in the classroom, on his desk. The door is closed and Mako is trying to keep her eyes fixed on the view through the window, but it hurts. It hurts a breathtaking amount, and Mako is desperate not to cry. 

He pulls out. "First time?"

Mako says, quietly, unable to look him in the eye, "Yes." 

He looks like he doesn't quite believe her. "Get down on your knees," he says. "I'm going to come on your face." 

Mako refuses, refuses to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. 

...

As bad as that was, Onibaba is worse. 

As bad as any of it is, Mako still wants to kill kaiju. 

...

At the double event, Scott Hansen unclips from of his harness to go for a flare gun: he isn't soft like the brother he saw for the first time in years in Stacker's office, but he knows his duty as a Ranger. He takes pride in how well he does it, and he raised Chuck that way. He gets knocked against a bulkhead, and something is clearly and definitely broken, but he gets the flares. They go up onto Striker's shoulders and fire. Gipsy Danger comes out of the fog, tethered to heavy choppers. 

With Scott's broken collarbone, who is going to pilot Striker? 

After five years of piloting with his uncle, is Chuck Hansen still his father's son?


	4. Don't let it go far.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Two kaiju maintain a holding position around the Breach._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter isn't any nicer than the ones that came before. This one involves suicide and references to hideous child abuse.

Stacker remembers Tottenham as close-packed buildings and his mother's cooking and the smell of car and bus exhaust. Also, the smell that filled the hallways when someone was making rum cake: cloves and all spice and flour and sugar in massive quantities for massive family weddings. Stacker remembers the weight of the knife in his hand, then the slosh of gasoline, then watching his mother and sister in court, on their knees, begging for mercy for him. 

Anger in the gut at twelve feels like anger in the gut at forty. 

...

In the double event, Scott Hansen breaks his collarbone. His nephew stands in the 02 position in the fastest Jaeger left on earth, and he can't pilot it alone. 

"How do you know you can Drift with him?"

"How do you know you'll last to the ocean floor?"

Herc is looking at him with an expression Stacker is more used to seeing Mako's face. Fighting with Herc is also new: they're standing in Stacker's quarters with the door closed and locked. Stacker is tired, and there are specks of blood on his shirt from when he met Mako and Raleigh afterwards. Over Herc's shoulder, the sun is setting on the Hong Kong skyline, and Herc doesn't say that he had no idea Stacker was this sick: he has known for years and years and years. The first round of Mark I's were thrown together in fourteen months. They had neither escape pods nor sufficient shielding. Lucky Seven came from the second round of the first generation. It had adequate shielding, but not escape pods. 

"You aren't dying," Stacker says. 

Herc crosses his arms over his chest. "The world needs you more."

He says it like a fact, the light from the sunset over the metal of his collar, and Stacker is angry again. 

...

The Academy was hard, but Stacker understood how it worked. What could they do that hadn't been done to him at the reform school when he was thirteen and small and unused to being property? The Academy didn't have wide collars that forced the head up and the shoulders back. They were simpler. More direct, and Stacker's old trick of putting his mind away still worked. 

Also, at the Academy, he had Tamsin: choosing to dye her hair red to match the color of her punishment, choosing to put a metal bar through her eyebrow to match the collar. Who would have thought that the algorithms would match them? But it was there from the first moment they were in a room together and Stacker said that he was Luna's little brother, and she said that she had been Luna's -- friend. They'd gone through pilot school together. Stacker has, vividly, the memory of sitting on a roof in Kodiak with Tamsin. They were cold as hell, but the northern lights were overhead, and what was anyone going to do to them? String them up in dress blues and have them bleeding through their shirts at the ceremony where they were officially assigned to Coyote Tango? They wore coats and sat on a blanket dragged off their beds; they split a mug of coffee spiked with vodka. Stacker remembers the burn in his throat, the numb feeling in his legs from sitting on the cold roof, the bite in his lungs from cold air. 

Tamsin looked over. "Happy?"

Stacker laughed and told her to pass him the coffee. 

...

Here is how Tamsin came to be a red-collar: Luna and Tamsin were free, citizen pilots in the military. Their RAAF squadron was in San Francisco when Trespasser surfaced, and they deployed in an emergency joint action with USAF on-station. 

Luna died. Tamsin didn't. On coming back to base, still wearing her flight suit, Tamsin walked up to their flight leader and hit him in the mouth with her helmet. Blood. Teeth. Stacker has seen it in her memory, felt the impact go up her arm. The man fell down, and Tamsin dragged him back up and hit him again and again and again and when he couldn't stand anymore, she started to kick him in the head, in the face, in the stomach. The other surviving pilots stood and watched, silently. They did what they could to keep the MP's out until Tamsin had beaten him almost all the way to death. They agreed, and no fewer than three of them put their own safety and freedom on the line to testify for Tamsin at the court matial: still, the Code was clear, and Tamsin was new to being property. Stacker remembers helping her navigate at the Academy, showing her when you could push back and when you couldn't, figuring outtogether who they could push back against and who wouldn't have one of them up on the rings, but would have the taste for taking it out of the skin of the other, too. 

In the Drift, Stacker could taste her white-hot anger at all of it. She knew what the knife felt like in his hand; he felt the way bone cracked when she swung her helmet into the man's face. When they piloted together in Coyote Tango, he could use that memory to jerk her out of a RABIT or pick them off the ground or break a deadlock: the way the man had seen her coming and tried to run. How satisfying it had been to hit him and hit him and hit him again and erase, for a little while, the fact that the last time she ever heard Luna's voice was flat and impersonal with static, saying _roger that_ to a command that their squad leader was better positioned to carry out himself but was too fucking cowardly to do. All he had to do was let a little of that spool into the Drift, and Tamsin would come roaring back into the Drift, bigger than the kaiju, bigger than the sun, bigger than anything in the world, throwing both of them against the monster in their way. 

_\-- isn't fair isn't fair isn't right goddammit Stacks you know it isn't right they fucking killed her they're trying to fucking kill us and if we die, I swear to God, Stacks, I will not give them the pleasure of staying dead, I will fucking come back and --_

Stacker can't count the number of times her anger and will kept them alive. 

...

After Tokyo, Stacker came by her hospital room. They talked; he held her hand: her roots were growing out, and still holding hands, she congratulated him on getting free. That was what they always used to talk about, right? She told him about them taking out her piercings and even her collar to send her through the medical scan device. First time she'd been without it coming up on four years, and Stacker listened and went on holding her hand. 

Even then, he realizes, Tamsin had probably been hoarding her pain medication, probably only taking half or biting off parts of pills: two weeks later, word came back that Coyote was going to be reassigned to an entirely new crew, and she took what she had been saving. 

He got the news in New York, three thousand miles away. In the morning, he had received congratulations from a grateful United Nations Assembly. In the evening, he was going to a special reception being held in his honor. In his hotel room that afternoon, sunlight streaming through the curtains and Central Park far, far below, the door locked and his head between his knees, Stacker let himself have half an hour for grief. He imagined the fluorescent lights overhead, the empty bed next to Tamsin, how much of the brown would have been showing in her hair. Would they have put her piercings back in? If they'd let her have those back, they would've put the collar back on, so she would have died with that fucking thing on her, so maybe it was better -- through his tears, Stacker looks up, sees that he has another ten minutes left to grieve, so he lets himself call up the memory of giving her a framed photo of Luna to keep at her bedside. How long did it take for them to find her after she died? Did they even try to revive her? 

For half an hour, Stacker cries like he hasn't cried in decades: tears running down his face, he knocks over half the furniture in the room, but Tamsin doesn't come back from the dead. He has to set the furniture back up, sweep the broken glass and say a word to his media contact, or the blue contract workers who clean the room will be punished. He still has to put on his dress blues. He still has to talk with men and women who have never worn a collar, never been afraid of the collar, never gone hungry or felt the strap, much less the whip, much, much less been forced to keep their legs apart for someone they didn't want for fear of something worse. 

Stacker lets himself have thirty minutes to grieve for Tamsin. 

He has the rest of his life, he figures, to do something for all the Jaeger pilots and Shatterdome personnel that he can.

...

Not that night, but a night afterwards, Stacker asks about the child in blue. 

Is she safe? Is she back with her parents? 

...

Stacker and Herc have a brief, sharp argument about who will climb back into the Drift with Chuck Hansen. Chuck is a a big kid, raised these past five years by his uncle. Stacker can see the contempt that he has for his father: it's written on his face, and Stacker and Herc can both guess what might be in the kid's head. How can you Drift with someone who thinks so little of you? Who has had such a different concept of being a good person than you? Stacker is sure he can do it. So is Herc. First Drifts with relative strangers are easy. If you can lock into the handshake, there is no baggage. There is no connection. 

"You aren't dying," Stacker says. 

Herc closes his eyes and then opens them again. 

In the mix of light from the window and the overhead fixtures, they look gray one moment, blue another. Green a third. Stacker has loved Herc for years. 

Does Herc need to say, out loud, just how much he loves Stacker? 

"The world needs you more," Herc says. 

...

Two kaiju maintain a holding position around the Breach, and -- 

...

After Scissure, the first time that Herc had sex with another person because he wanted to was with Stacker. They were at the Academy; Stacker and Tamsin were visiting as part of a final unit on life in the field. There was a good dinner, beer, fire on a patio. Not all parts of being a Jaeger pilot were bad. Some parts were fairly comfortable, and after dinner, after the fire burned down, they slipped into an empty room together: Herc opened his mouth, a little hesitantly, in case Stacker wanted to kiss him. He wasn't sure how it went when both parties were slaves and consenting. 

Instead, they undressed together and lay down on the floor. It was dark; there was a little light from the Exit sign, a little coming from under the door, a little more coming from the shining shining through the slats of the drawn blinds. It was a conference room, because they needed a door that would lock, and the dormitory doors didn't. So they went into a conference room, and they touched each other. When they kissed, their collars clinked until Stacker reached up between them and rotated his: after that, it was just metal against skin after that, and the first time Herc put his tongue into Stacker's mouth, he caught his breath, pulled it out halfway again, but then gathered up his courage. He ran his tongue over Stacker's lower lip, and Stacker moaned into his mouth. 

They were on their sides on the carpet next to the conference table, and Herc was surprised by how turned on he was. When he was free, he'd never -- 

Stacker started laughing. "Hold on," he said, hand on his own dick. "Let me catch up." 

Grinning wide enough that he felt stupid doing it, Herc reached a hand over to help out, and when Stacker closed his eyes, he rolled Stacker onto his back and went down on him. 

It surprised Herc how little it hurt him to do that, how much he liked it. 

...

They didn't so much as kiss after -- 

...

Two kaiju maintain a holding position around the Breach, and while putting on the Driftsuit, Herc tells them to he'll take his helmet out under his hand. He knows how to put it on, and in the boots from the suit, he is just as tall as Stacker: they look at each other for a long, long moment. Herc's collar is visible around the outside of the Driftsuit. Jaeger pilot collars looked loose because they're meant to fit over the armor: they formed the lock ring for the helmets. 

In all the time that Stacker was free and Herc wasn't, they never had sex. They talked; they laughed. They drank beer together, and Stacker asked Herc for advice on raising Mako, but not a kiss, not a touch in that way, not a single night or even half-hour together in that way. If that was how it worked when Stacker was free and Herc was a Jaeger pilot, how could it happen after Stacker had saved Herc from public execution? When Stacker's continued backing was the only reason Herc was alive? 

Herc offered once, but Stacker has his own memories of being thirteen and helpless, and in the Driftsuit preparation area, Herc kisses Stacker. Their mouths are on each other's for the first time in years. 

Then, they walk out to the maintenance bay, shoulder to shoulder. 

...

"Today," Stacker says, looking into the eyes of the people that stand in front of him, all the red-collareds and blue-collareds and free that the Corps has left, Mako and Raleigh in black, Herc and his son in khaki green. 

"Today," Stacker says, "we face the monsters that are at our door and in our own hearts." 

...

Two kaiju are holding around the Breach, and three men stand in a hallway. Chuck is in a Driftsuit; Scott Hansen is not. Chuck looks at his father and sees the ways in which they don't look alike: hair color, facial features, build, though his father has more muscle than Chuck would have expected for someone who spent five years out of a Jaeger. They look at each other for a moment, but have no words that fit until Herc says, "I'll give you a moment."

Chuck goes to talk to his uncle. They say goodbye to each other; Chuck hugs his dog, then stands next to his father. Together, they walk into Striker's Conn-Pod.


	5. Monsters.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Knifehead is still his worst memory._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a not-nice conclusion to a fic set in a not-nice universe where sexual assault is used to punish people. We also remember how the movie ends in canon, right? 
> 
> This chapter uses the full canon name for GD.

Four days before, on the floor of the Jaeger maintenance bay, Stacker makes introductions. _Pilots of Striker Eureka,_ he says, and Scott and Raleigh size each other up, then shake hands. Scott says, companionably, that he knows Raleigh. They've ridden together before; Raleigh agrees, and Scott offers up that he is sorry about Yancy. Raleigh nods. 

The transport choppers drop Danger a quarter-mile ahead of Striker, and her chain-swords are out moments after touching down onto the ocean bottom. 

...

Three days before, in the conduit hallway, Scott congratulates Raleigh and Mako. Scott's right arm is in a sling, and Raleigh shakes Scott's left hand. Glancing over his shoulder, Scott says that his co-pilot would never admit it, but he's grateful -- he holds his left hand out for Mako to shake, but Mako conspicuously turns away. She looks straight past him to the wall on the far side, her face going extra blank when her eyes pass over Chuck, and Raleigh looks at her, surprised. 

It's the second-biggest surprise of the half-hour, though: with half of the Shatterdome around him, the Marshal gets a nosebleed. It's the classic sign of Drift-induced circulatory collapse, and Stacker flinches. He cuts his speech short. 

Mako's expression afterwards tells Raleigh everything he needs to know about how far gone the Marshal is. 

...

On the way to the Breach, the Drift tells Raleigh everything he needs to know about what kind of man Scott Hansen is, what kind of man he has raised his nephew to be. 

Even in the Conn-POD, they can hear the thunder of the choppers overhead. Raleigh thinks more than says it, but even a thought suggestion that Mr. Hansen -- Mako's indignation only lasts for as long as it takes a handful of brain synapses to fire, but Raleigh smells pine needles, feels strong hands carefully holding Mako while she cries and cries because she thinks her dream of piloting is dead. Herc Hansen tries to be gentle even tied down and waiting to hear if he'll be flogged to death. Herc Hansen clasps Mako's hand in a dark room, and words aren't coming out of him at the moment, but he is grateful to Mako for going after the two men and one woman who were going to hold him down and rape him on orders to teach Stacker Pentecost about stealing other Marshals' pilots. 

Raleigh looks at Mako, and she looks back at him. 

The two kaiju around the Breach are named Raiju and Scunner. 

...

Mako has been protecting Herc Hansen for years, so when he comes onto the Jaeger floor wearing black armor, he doesn't have to say it. Instead, they look at each other, and Mako and Stacker have already said their goodbyes, so Stacker gives a speech in front of Striker's foot. Raleigh knows that Mako would feel the same way about protecting a Striker with two Scott Hansens in it or a LOCCENT staffed entirely by the instructor who raped her on his desk at fourteen and, during the rest of the time she was at the Academy, taught Mako how he liked to have his dick sucked. 

Mako hates the cruelty of the collars, loathes the people and system that have done this to her and the people she loves, but she hates kaiju more. Running down a street in Tokyo, screaming, is still her worst memory. 

Raleigh was a Ranger; with Yancy, he survived the Academy and piloting afterwards. When he didn't have his brother anymore, he survived the punishment room, then the cold and danger and brutality of the Wall. He learned how to weld; he did what he needed to get out of the pens and into the girders. _Construction_. 

Knifehead is still his worst memory. 

...

Raleigh remembers growing up free and comfortable. New cars every other year, snowmobiles, the hunting cabin. He remembers going on trips overseas -- Paris and Cairo and London and the two-week cruise down the Danube, a different fairy-tale castle every morning. They were in Budapest for Yancy's tenth birthday. 

Raleigh remembers his father leaving. Raleigh remembers crying when they moved out of the house with a view of the mountain; he remembers sulking for a week when Ma gave away their dog Misty because she said they couldn't afford one anymore, and he remembers being in the kitchen, listening to Yancy and Ma fight with each other. Raleigh was twelve; he had a general idea of what getting a blue collar meant, and Yancy was telling Ma that he could get more hours at the grocery store, Rals could get a job starting next year, but Ma was almost incoherent. She was crying, and Raleigh remembers trying to figure out what she was saying. There was a strangely quiet half minute or so while she and Yancy talked in low voices, but the volume picked up abruptly when Ma screamed at Yancy that she'd signed the papers, so it was done, and he should go back and eat his fucking roast chicken dinner. 

The bar fight itself is blurred, but Raleigh remembers the bright lights of the holding tank, then the the bubble of panic when they dumped him into an interrogation room and Yancy was there. It was a bar fight. What the hell was there to interrogate? Then, a Corps officer came in, wearing blue and pretending to be their friend. He told them how bad they'd beaten up the son of a local judge. The kid was in the hospital; they thought there might be brain damage. 

Raleigh remembers that he and Yancy each blurting out at the same moment that he'd been the one who hit the asshole. 

...

_Good thing you boys are Drift compatible_ , the officer said. 

Yancy was the one who made the call to Ma and sat there, face white and stiff, while she cried and cursed them both. Yancy was the one who got pulled out of Gipsy Danger 

...

_Would you rather die here or in a Jaeger?_ Stacker Pentecost asked, and in the Drift, taking on two Category-4's in a Mark III, they have Raleigh's hot anger and Mako's cold fury. Raleigh's hard-earned experience mixes with Mako's technical precision. Striker is under instructions to stay back, keep the perimeter, and not to engage unless absolutely necessary: the choppers drop Gipsy Danger and Striker Eureka as close as possible to the Breach. 

Inside the Drift, Mako reminds Raleigh that Gipsy is nuclear. Double cores. 

...

Hospital, brain damage, a world that treats people as means to other ends: _one of you hurt that boy bad_ , a Corps officer says to Raleigh and Yancy. 

_Good thing you boys are Drift-compatible._

Two months later, on a weekend pass from the Academy, on a main street in Anchorage, Raleigh sees the asshole goes flying by with three of his friends, all of them on new ATV's. Six months later, they have to get approval from the company that owned Ma to bury her next to her parents, and Yancy works out a deal with the Corps so that Jaz wouldn't end up under a state blue collar to pay them back for _foster care_ until she was eighteen, so that Jaz wouldn't end up in the Academy if she got pulled over for a speeding ticket, so that -- 

Gipsy drives a chain blade clean through Scunner's torso; jets of kaiju blood follow the blade back out. 

Three steps, two hundred seventy feet closer to the Breach. Striker keeps to Gipsy's tail. 

...

Raleigh is a zen garden on Tanegashima; Mako is standing in a field of grass in the Anchorage suburbs, throwing a ball to a dog named Misty. Raleigh is on a desk, trying not to cry while being fucked by a forty year old bully; Mako is tied down in a punishment room and screaming because it hurts more than she could ever have imagined. Mako stands in the rain at her mother's funeral; Raleigh watches Herc Hansen wake up. He leans forward and gently tucks a straw into Herc's mouth. They're waiting for _sensei_ to come back and tell them whether Mr. Hansen's death sentence has been commuted, and the surge of emotion that Mako and Raleigh feel -- 

Raiju tries to slip back and build up speed to ram Gipsy, but Striker keeps the perimeter and drives it back. Mako braces; Raleigh raises the chain blade, and they cleave Raiju from throat to tail, but lose the right arm in the process. 

Scunner rears up in the water, a nightmare four hundred forty feet tall. 

...

Raleigh is laughing and playing chess with Yancy; they're both wearing Gipsy Danger jackets, and whatever else he hated about being a Ranger, Raleigh loved being in a Jaeger with his brother. 

Mako is sitting between Herc and Stacker on a couch in Stacker's quarters; _sensei_ is reading papers. Some kind of sporting event is on television, and Herc is watching, remote control in hand. It's raining outside; someone should clear away the lunch dishes, but _sensei_ is there and relaxed. Mr. Hansen is there and happy. Mako falls asleep on her independent study reading -- this is before the Academy, and when she wakes up a little, she realizes that Herc has put his Lucky Seven vest on top of her to keep her warm. Her head is on his shoulder; her feet are tucked up against _sensei_. Mako goes back to sleep, because she knows that she is safe and loved. She is warm; if she is hungry when she wakes up, there will be food for her. She shares the memory with Raleigh because she wants him to know what _sensei_ and Mr. Hansen mean to her. She knows how much he loved Yancy. His mother. His sister. 

Half the lights in their Conn-POD are flashing to indicate overload or damage. 

...

Raiju is dead, but took with it an arm. Scunner took a leg and is still alive. How far is the Breach now? A hundred feet? Seventy-five feet? Raleigh can feel blood running down the inside of his Driftsuit; Mako's breathing is labored, desperate. Wordlessly, Striker comes off the line, and they fight Scunner together, Gipsy protecting the payload on Striker's back. Raleigh feels old Kwoon memories flicking through his head. Yancy flipping him on the mat. Herc Hansen showing Mako how to pull the takedown, again and again, infinitely patient. Stacker Pentecost, the beginning and end of everything for Mako: listening to her first father cough with lungs carrying cancer, watching her second father die over the course of years. The nosebleeds are silent. 

The scientists come rushing into LOCCENT and shove Stacker Pentecost off the conn. Tendo warns something is coming through the breach, something big. Barcodes, Scunner screaming for help, and whatever it is in the Breach starts to come out faster. It's bigger than big. It's huge. Mako looks over at Raleigh; Raleigh looks back at her. Water is jetting into the Conn-POD; all the lights are red, and even with Striker, they are barely hanging on with just Scunner. 

Without waiting for LOCCENT, without giving Striker a chance, Gipsy drives its remaining chain sword into Scunner and lets momentum carry it forward. 

It leaps. 

_Mr. Hansen always said --_

...

On the Wall, Raleigh sucked dick and licked snatch until he found someone who would teach him a skill, any skill that would get him out of the pens where half the unskilled labor was dead within six months of arrival, and Raleigh let a man fuck him for weeks without using a condom because he was showing Raleigh how to weld. Mako announced on the first day of heading the rebuilding of Gipsy Danger she wasn't going to write any tickets for flogging, but that she'd personally break fingers of anyone, collared or free, who pushed back against her authority for that reason. A week in, she slammed a red collar into a table and worked the pressure points on his wrist until he screamed. Mako asked if he was going to do it again; he said he wasn't. When he tried it again a month in, she broke two fingers and his left wrist. 

...

In the first moments in the Breach, Mako is still awake and able to try the self-destruct mode: no luck. 

It's too badly damaged from trying to fight two Category-4's at the same time. Mako starts to struggle to get out of her motion harness, so that she can do the manual override, but Raleigh tells her that he'll do it. He knows how to. He has the information straight from her head. _Anyone can fall_ , he says, and he takes three deep breaths, plug his oxygen into Mako's suit, and goes down into the reactor: he throws the switch, then comes back to Mako. 

Even with his oxygen, she is swaying and barely conscious inside her Driftsuit. Gipsy Danger is tumbling into the Anteverse, and to keep Raleigh with her, Mako puts her arms around him and engages a magnetic lock that he didn't know was in the new Driftsuits. Mako is still enough herself to smile, pleased at an engineering trick. Raleigh closes his eyes; the oxygen deprivation is making him slow and clumsy, and there is fog on the inside of Mako's Driftsuit helmet, a sign that it isn't just her oxygen system, but the whole air rebreathing system is shutting down. Thickly, Raleigh thinks that he'd like to see her face again before they die, but neither of them has the strength to remove their helmets. The air inside his helmet smells like blood. 

He hopes Mako isn't in pain, and she says something that he can't quite make out. 

Raleigh guesses it's in Japanese. He doesn't know if it's meant for him; he doesn't have long to wonder. 

...

On climbing into Gipsy Danger for Pitfall, Raleigh never said a word to Mako about _thinking about the future_ and _bad timing_. Mako never asked Raleigh to look into the heart of Gipsy Danger. 

For them, death doesn't hurt. 

...

"Mr. Hansen always said that if you have a shot, you take it." 

...

Two escape pods surface, and two lock plates come off: both of them have working tracer dye units, and the sound of transport choppers is already audible. Herc can hear cheering through the connlink in his suit; Striker was too destroyed to resurface, but Herc knows the Breach is closed. He knew when Slattern went limp and they hadn't done enough damage to kill it. 

Now, the sky is gray and cloudy above them. Chuck stands on top of his escape pod, yelling like the twenty-one year old boy that he is, and the choppers are getting closer and closer. If Herc raises his head, he thinks he'll see them overhead in a flying vee formation, but he takes a deep breath of the sea air and realizes that he is kneeling on his escape pod. There are tears on his face and salt on his lips, and he can hear Scott congratulating Chuck through the connlink, can hear Chuck start cheering again, but Stacker's voice is rough when he says to turn off the War Clock. There is a splash, and Herc realizes that Chuck dove off his pod and has come swimming on over. Chuck grins at his father; his hair is wet from the water, and Herc sees brother's expressions on his son's face. He knows what he saw in the Drift. 

Command will give him and Chuck their freedom for PItfall. Scott, too, probably.

It's all Herc desperately wanted a decade before.

Now, it tastes as bitter as tears or sea water in the mouth. 

...

At this point, Herc Hansen has learned. 

Death doesn't have to hurt. Living in this world does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear to God that originally, Mako and Raleigh and Chuck and Herc were all going to die in a cleansing, pure flame, but then [windsweptfic](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/5017810) pointed out that living is worse. And the worst things always happen to Herc Hansen. At least he has the consolation of Stacker Pentecost! Until Stacker dies! So the ending is purely her fault.

**Author's Note:**

> This would never ever have gotten written if it weren't for [wantonlywindswept](http://wantonlywindswept.tumblr.com).
> 
> Chapter headings 1-4 from [Sights by London Grammar](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLsgmThfPQU).


End file.
